On the Wing
by Julia456
Summary: Based on the miniseries. David returns to the squadron... and gets more than he bargained for.
1. Shipping out

Notes: Okay. I started writing this a few days after the miniseries aired, as a reaction. It stalled and I lost interest in it; then I came back to it in August, when I abandoned it again. Finally I picked it up once more in mid-November and, this time, to my utter surprise, I finished it. 

The reaction element is still very much a part of this. Mostly it's because I thought the mini- series, in its zeal to portray Marion as the only female character of note, seriously dropped the ball regarding Romana. It's also because I like to wedge hideously non-canon stuff like the mini- series back into continuity. A hopeless task, I assure you.

This takes place at some point soon after the miniseries ended, and is entirely AU to the show.

The character of Chaz is borrowed, with apologies, from Alan Dean Foster's excellent novels Dinotopia Lost and The Hand of Dinotopia, which are easily the best of the junior books. Most of the secondary characters are based on those seen in the miniseries; I just gave them names and personalities. And some of them I just made up. :)

Revision Notes: I have never been happy with this fic, never. I finally hit critical mass with my unhappiness and revised the elements that bothered me the most - basically, chapter eight. I still hold the books to be gospel and the miniseries to be heresy, but for this story it works better the other way around.

* * *

David was talking with his father in the guest room - the latest in a series of long-delayed conversations about their lives in general - when Zippo poked his head around the door and coughed politely. "Begging your pardon, David, but there's a message for you."

He looked at the green stenonychosaurus, curious and a little puzzled. He never got messages. "A message?"

Zippo bobbed his head in the dinosaur version of a nod. "I believe it has something to do with the Skybax Corps."

That explained it. David stood, offering his father an apologetic glance, and followed Zippo to the large front room of the librarian's apartment. He was expecting a postal bird, or maybe a written letter, so he was surprised to see the uniformed figure of Romana Denison standing stiffly in the middle of the room and exchanging even stiffer conversation with Marion and Karl. Romana's eyes, however, were firmly on the portrait hanging on the wall across the room - the woman who had been Zippo's human life partner.

"David," Romana said the second he came into view, forestalling his own greeting to Marion. He nodded acknowledgement to his fellow skybax rider, and Romana stood to attention, then handed him a scroll with solemn formality. He took it, breaking the seal and unrolling it; the words were written in the Dinotopian footprint alphabet, and as he deciphered it, Romana recited the message from memory: "You are hereby ordered to report to the squadron at first light tomorrow, at the city rookery. We are returning to Canyon City."

"Tomorrow?" he asked, dismayed.

"At first light," Karl said, looking not at all dismayed. "Bummer. We'll miss you."

David shot his brother a dark look. "I'm sure you will."

Romana cleared her throat, dragging the two brothers out of their unspoken squabble. "I have other riders to notify. Breath deep, seek peace," she said, making her way to the door, where she paused. In the same stilted, forced politeness that she'd been using when David entered, Romana said to Marion, "Please give my regards to Aunt Rosemary."

"I will," Marion said, matching the other girl's tone. David looked at her, a little confused by the sudden change in her attitude. He was used to Romana's intenseness in all things, but he'd never seen Marion be anything other than warm and gracious... But there had been that once, he realized suddenly, during training, when she'd mentioned Romana. He'd chalked it up to jealousy (realistically or not), but now it looked like there was more to it.

Romana nodded, cast a last, wistful glance at the portrait, and left without any further comment.

" 'Aunt Rosemary'?" Karl asked immediately, before the door had barely closed. "She's related to you?"

"My cousin," Marion said, bending down to pick up the baby chasmosaur that had just escaped, again, from her crib. 26 honked and wriggled with happiness, and Marion gave her frill an affectionate pat.

David, mindful of the chilly tension between the two girls, hesitated before saying, "But in Canyon City... You acted like strangers."

"That's family business," Marion said, rather curtly, turning away from him and handing 26 to Karl. "And not any of yours. Excuse me."

She, too, left without further word, shutting the door a bit too hard on her way out. Karl turned to David with a broad grin. "Ouch. Guess the magic's gone."

David scowled. "Shut up."

Karl looked down at 26 in his arms, saying, "What do you think, kiddo? Should we go cheer up Marion?"

26 blinked her big dark eyes and honked a clear affirmation. For an infant creature with no human language, 26 was amazingly expressive, modulating the pitch and tone of her honks and chirps to communicate precise - if not always understandable - expressions. David missed half of what she said, though, simply because he was more in tune with the squawks and caws of his skybax.

"You might as well," David said, unable to keep a stab of bitterness from his voice. "I have to pack everything and get my uniform prepped."

"Well, then, let's go," Karl said. He flashed David a victorious smile, then sauntered out of the apartment humming "Feelin' Satisfied" with a vigorous chasmosaur accompaniment.

David did not hate his brother. He didn't. His brother wasn't evil. There wasn't a Cain-and-Abel dynamic going on between them - and if there was, he would have been the first to claim that he was the victim, not the aggressor.

It was just that, sometimes, and especially when it came to Marion, he really wanted to smash Karl's face in.

"Jerk," he muttered now, stopping himself from saying anything stronger only because cursing wasn't Dinotopian, and he was trying very hard to be Dinotopian. It had certainly brought him more fulfillment than being American.

Zippo, who had disappeared as he always did when sibling unpleasantness threatened, reemerged and cautiously approached David. "I'd be most glad to help you pack, although I'm sorry you have to go. It will be lonely without roommates now."

"Thanks, Zippo," David said with a conscious effort to stop brooding and focus on the friend standing in front of him. "I need all the help I can get. But what do you mean, no roommates? What about Karl and Dad?"

"Oh, well, I thought you knew," Zippo said. His long, slender tail danced back and forth anxiously. "Karl and your father are going to Vidabba in a week's time. Karl has been accepted as an apprentice at the hatchery."

David nodded, smiling what he knew was a sour smile, and started to make his way back to the guest room. "And Marion's going there too."

"Well, yes," Zippo confirmed, following after him. "Her mother has just decided to take her on as a temporary assistant - to give her some experience of running a large farm."

"Fantastic," David said, and pushed open the door to the guest room.

His father was staring down at a footprint book in intense concentration; the alphabet, he'd said, was not difficult to remember, once you saw the pattern. Now he looked up at David and said, "I heard some doors slamming. Trouble?"

"No, not really." David picked up his bag from its place on the floor and went to dig his uniform out of the closet. "But I have to go back to Canyon City tomorrow. And we leave at first light, so I need to get ready now."

His father, who had been in the Marines before becoming a millionaire businessman, put down the book and chuckled. "Welcome to the life, David. Want some help with the uniform? I still know how to iron."

"Yeah, okay," he said, but his mind was on the blue skies and soaring cliffs of Canyon City, and the fact that Marion would be nowhere near them.


	2. Partners

Note: I feel compelled to add that, as someone who knows several people with asthma, I am well aware that desert climates are not necessarily better. That's why it's called _creative license!_ :)

* * *

They flew out from Waterfall City the next morning, with dawn shining into their eyes, and made Canyon City before noon. As much as he missed Marion - and his father and brother, too, if the truth be known, and of course Zippo - David felt an undeniable thrill of homecoming as he climbed off Freefall's back and set foot on the red cliff sand again.

In Waterfall City, you could feel the falls rumbling underneath your feet all the time, day or night, and the whole city was shrouded in constant mist. Canyon City was full of dry heat, and the  
only sounds were the rush of wind through the rock spires and the cries of skybax. He didn't like the wet, heavy mist; it made his asthma kick up. Out here in the desert, though, he breathed easier. Literally.

The six squadron members who had made the flight with him filed down the familiar path, out of the rookery proper and down the long, winding stairs that led to the training room, where they would discuss the flight with Oonu or one of the other instructors. David had done that exactly once before his dismissal from the Corps, and he headed for the stairs with some unease.

Freefall squawked behind him, saying good-bye, and as he turned to wave in response, he saw Romana standing at the very edge of the landing platform. Her hair fluttered in the strong breeze, and once again he had that sick feeling of vertigo from just _thinking_ of the height. Flying with a powerful, steady skybax beneath you was one thing - standing alone on the edge of a six-thousand-foot drop was another.

"Romana," he called, wondering what she was doing. Normally she would have been the first one in line to report. "Are you okay?"

She turned away from the spreading cliffscape and crossed the rookery floor with brisk steps. "I'm just happy to be home," she said, and started down the stairs. "Come on. We're going to be late."

He shrugged and followed her.

They were the last two in the short, eight-person line - nothing unusual there. Oonu himself was waiting for them, though, which made David a little nervous, and he wished he'd gotten down the stairs faster.

"Welcome back," Oonu said, pacing the length of the line. "I know you're eager to discuss your flight, but that will not happen today. Instead -" He paused and let the moment hang in the air, building tension, then continued with, "I have an announcement to make.

"This squadron has been pushed harder and faster than any I've ever taught, and given your exemplary performance during the pteranodon crisis, I see no reason to hold any of you back now. From this moment on, you will be full second-year cadets, with all the the responsibilities inherent. The other squadron members have already been informed of the changes."

The discipline of the line broke down into murmured exclamations of surprise and joy. David >kept quiet, although he felt a surge of pride; not too bad for someone who just got off the boat, so to speak. Oonu stopped in front of Romana and gave her a rare smile. "At this rate, Cadet Romana, you'll break your father's record."

Before she could do little more than smile and lift her chin in acknowledgement, Oonu stepped away from her and said, "Before you are dismissed for the day, I will assign each of you wingmates. This is a partnership that cannot be broken - a bond between both skybaxes and their riders that will last from now until you leave the service. The Corps will only intervene and separate you if the situation endangers lives. Take the commitment seriously, and settle your grievances on your own time."

Oonu withdrew a scroll from his belt and began reading names. All of the riders were on good terms - enmity was not a concept that flourished in Dinotopia - and no one looked unhappy at the selections.

David was just beginning to wonder when his name would be called when Oonu said, "Stratus and Romana Denison, you are to be wingmates with Freefall and David Scott."

The arrangement of the names made David a little perturbed. Sure, 'D' came before 'S' in the alphabet, but he'd just helped save the whole island, for God's sake. Surely that earned him the right to get his name called first, even if William Denison _had_ been the Corps archetype.

But he just nodded, accepting the decision, and glanced at Romana to see what she thought. He caught a flicker of something odd on her face - something dark and quiet - and then it vanished, replaced by the same pleasant expression that everyone else was wearing.

Oonu added, "You two may be the only ones who can keep up with each other."

The other squadron members chuckled, and then Oonu read the last set of names and finished with, "I'll see you all at dawn. Dismissed. Breathe deep."

"Fly high!" They snapped to attention and then fell out of the line, the new partners heading off to relax and enjoy the rare free day. David and Romana, walking together by default, were immediately approached by Kiyoshi and Elwin, two cadets who had something of a reputation as clowns, although they never played around in the air. Oonu had been smart to stick them together, David knew, because they'd drive anyone else crazy.

"Hey, David, my parents sent a postal bird saying that if I don't bring the hero of Dinotopia home for lunch, they'll throw me to the mosasaurs," Elwin said, grinning broadly and slapping him on the back. "So come on and do me a favor, huh?"

"Mosasaurs? I thought it was the sabretooths," Kiyoshi retorted before David could give his answer. "And Romana, even though this pachy-head forgot, you're invited too."

"Thanks," she said, offering up a genuine smile. "But I can't. I promised to meet with Chaz the moment I returned home."

Both Kiyoshi and Elwin raised their eyebrows, looking honestly surprised. Elwin said, "Chaz? Wow, he actually left that desk in Sauropolis?"

Romana nodded, the smile still in place. "I could barely believe it myself."

Before David could do more than start to wonder who Chaz was - a brother, a cousin, or, somewhat more disturbingly, a boyfriend? - their conversation was interrupted.

"Cadet Romana!" Oonu called out behind them, and they all stopped and turned around.

With his usual professionalism, Oonu said, "Your medal of commendation is in your quarters. Fine job. Your parents would be proud."

"Thank you, sir," she said, losing her smile, then walked on.

"Medal? For what?" David asked her. She was keeping a fairly rapid pace now, and he had to hurry to catch up with her. That was easier said than done when the path was skirting the edge of the cliff.

" 'For courage and selfless action,' " Kiyoshi answered instead, saying the phrase with mock seriousness. "Didn't you hear? She chased down a pteranodon and saved the life of a little boy."

"No, I didn't hear." David looked at her, confused. "When was that?"

Romana sighed. "The night the pteranodon swarm attacked Waterfall City. A little boy - Oliver - was taken by a pteranodon. I was flying nearby, saw them, and Stratus was able to catch up to them."

"And then she courageously and with selfless action plucked little Oliver from the very claws of death," Kiyoshi concluded, illustrating the story with sweeping gestures. "The poets and hadrosaurs will sing of her forever."

"Oh, be quiet," Romana said, the smile returning at last, although she still looked troubled, and she hadn't slowed down at all. "Stratus did all of the work. And anyway, I saved one life; David saved us all."

"It wasn't just me," David said quickly. "Karl and Dad got the all of the sunstones."

Elwin wagged a finger at him. "Ah, but _you_ brought one to Waterfall City at the crucial moment. No false modesty, now, either of you."

The path, which had luckily widened out, now split into two routes. Kiyoshi and Elwin started down one, but Romana took the other. "Have fun!" Elwin called to her.

She waved, not looking back, and then disappeared around a twisting red-and-yellow spire.

David was momentarily at a loss. He stopped walking and stood in the middle of the forking paths, staring after her with a frown and a bemused sense of guilt. Had he done something? He must have, but he couldn't think of anything.

"Hey, what is it?" Kiyoshi asked.

"She didn't say goodbye," David answered, still frowning. Romana never broke tradition.

Kiyoshi just shrugged and made a dismissive gesture. "So she forgot. You can bug her about it for the rest of your lives - come on, we're starving!"

David hadn't exactly had a lot of girlfriends - okay, he'd had one, and that had been two years ago - but he thought he recognized the signs of trouble when he saw them, even if Romana was nowhere near "girlfriend" status. "Maybe I should go see what's wrong..."

"After lunch," Elwin said firmly, grabbing his arm and propelling David down the path. "Trust me, you don't want to get on Chaz's bad side by barging in on the reunion."

He looked over his shoulder at the place where Romana had disappeared, then gave up and went with the flow. "Who _is_ Chaz?"

"The protoceratops that raised her after her parents died," Kiyoshi said. "I thought you knew that. She's always talking about him."

David looked over his shoulder again, this time even more confused. He wanted to say, _"Not around me, she's not,"_ but that seemed like an admission of something. Instead, he said, "I guess I wasn't paying attention."


	3. In the dark

Sunset found David in the cadets' quarters, trading stories and jokes with the better part of the squadron over a cheerfully miscellaneous collection of food and drinks. People wandered in and out, taking the impromptu party outside to enjoy the evening. Most Dinotopians preferred to be outside; it was a cultural thing, David had decided, brought on by the fact that they had a good deal more respect for nature than the so-called Outer World.

David, though, stayed inside. He was having a good time; he'd never been much into the party scene, but it was different here. Every now and then, though, he caught himself brooding over Marion and Karl. More accurately, he was brooding over what they might be doing.

He really didn't want to think about it, but he did. It was frustrating and not a little annoying. Why did Karl get everything, while the only thing he got was a wingmate who was barely talking to him?

Romana had returned to the quarters not long after he'd staggered back from lunch. Elwin's parents had outdone themselves, and they had all happily violated the edict about not living to eat for the afternoon. David had barely caught a glimpse of the mysterious Chaz before the elderly protoceratops had shuffled away, snorting, his pink-orange markings faded but nonetheless looking bright in the omnipresent sunshine.

There didn't seem to be many old dinosaurs on the island, now that he thought about it; David made a mental note to ask someone about that.

But at the moment, he was more preoccupied in the story that Aolani was coaxing out of Romana. It involved William Denison and - coincidentally or not, David wasn't sure - Chaz, along with a missing family of struthimimuses and a building six-year storm. Protoceratopsians, David had been given to understand, often served as translators because they could speak a multitude of human and saurian languages with relative ease, and Chaz had not been an exception.

"So after Keelk led them to the Rainy Basin, what happened?" Aolani prompted, leaning forward with her chin propped on her hands.

Romana shook her head, and said around a mouthful of grapes, "No, no, all of you know this story! I'm not going to tell it again."

"David doesn't," Kiyoshi pointed out. "Tell him and we'll listen."

"Yeah, I want to hear this," David said, giving her an earnest nod. He really did, but beyond that, he wanted to make sure that there was no lasting problem between them. As Kiyoshi had said earlier, they were going to be partners for the rest of their time in the Corps.

The others chimed in, until finally Romana smiled and relented. "Fine, okay! After they entered the Rainy Basin. Well, they hadn't gone very far when two tyrannosaurs came charging out of the trees and challenged them."

Remembering his own meeting with the tyrannosaurs, David made a face. Not fun.

"It turned out that their daughter had been taken," Romana continued, "by 'humans who smelled like the sea.' Crookeye and Shethorn wanted to eat my father, Chaz, and Keelk, out of principle, but Father - with Chaz translating - managed to convince them that there was a better chance of recovering their daughter if they all worked together."

"And the names!" Aolani said, visibly excited. "This is the best part," she confided to David in a stage whisper.

"The tyrannosaurs were so impressed by my father, Chaz, and Keelk that they decided to make them honorary tyrannosaurs, and gave them all names. Chaz was 'Slayswithwords,' and Keelk was 'Walksthrustone,' for her determination." Romana's face took on a proud but wistful expression. "Father was 'Thinksthrufear'."

"And Romana," Kiyoshi added, shooting her an exaggerated look of jealousy, "is the only person in Dinotopia who can stroll through the Rainy Basin without becoming a snack, because that little tyrannosaur her father rescued is now the undisputed queen of her kind."

"Prettykill isn't undisputed," Romana disagreed. "Standtall is still vying to regain control."

David laughed, not quite believing what he was hearing. "Wait - you guys keep track of them? The Rainy Basin carnosaurs?"

"Of course," Elwin said, looking like the idea of _not_ keeping track of them was absurd. "They're Dinotopian citizens, even if they are antisocial."

Bridget, whose wingmate, Seif, was outside, cleared her throat and said, "The great ambassador Bix used to say, 'Tyrannosaurs aren't evil..."

" 'They just don't like the vegetables,' " everyone but David concluded, in unison, and then they all laughed.

"It's true, though," Bridget defended to David. He nodded, smiling appreciatively. The Dinotopian outlook was difficult to master, sometimes, but he was finding more and more that it was the way he wanted to see the world.

Romana picked up the thread of narration again. "So my father, Chaz, and Keelk tracked the humans and the missing dinosaurs, and discovered that it was a party of pirates from the Outer World. Father got Keelk's family free, and then eventually got Prettykill free too."

"And all the pirates reformed except for their leader and a few others, who wandered back into the Rainy Basin and were never seen again," Aolani finished, and Romana threw a grape at her. "What?"

Making a face, Romana said, "You tell the story next time." Aolani beamed, seemingly impervious to the criticism, which wasn't serious in any case.

"Speaking of stories," another cadet said, wandering in, "I don't think David's told any yet."

"Oh, Noam's right," Kiyoshi said, grinning. "And we never did get anything out of you during training. It's time for you to stop being such a rolled-up scroll and talk."

Bridget jumped in with, "The Outer World knows about dinosaurs, right? What do they think of them?"

"Well..." David tried to think of what he could tell them, but got stuck on _Jurassic Park_. It was as good a depiction as any of how dinosaurs were perceived his world. He didn't think the Dinotopians would appreciate it very much, though, if he told them that dinosaurs were seen as monster-movie villains. And then he'd have to explain _movies_, and that just seemed like far more trouble than it was worth. He shifted on the ground - they were sitting everywhere - and said, "Um... They're studied by scientists - their bones, I mean. Fossilized bones. And, um, a lot of people are interested in learning about them. I think the most popular one is _Tyrannosaurus rex_ ."

"How do you get around, without apatosaurs and ceratopsians?" Noam asked, plainly curious, taking a seat himself. He was Aolani's wingmate, but he didn't sit anywhere near her. David wondered what that meant, then dismissed it as none of his business.

"We use cars - um, automobiles. They're machines, like a carriage, only powered by an engine, and..." David trailed off as he saw a strange look crossing everyone's face.

"Strutters," Aolani murmured to Elwin, who nodded.

Slightly puzzled, David asked, "What?"

Romana said, "That's right, you've never heard what happened to Poseidos."

"It sank," Kiyoshi said matter-of-factly to David's questioning expression. "Chandaran tradition holds that it was destroyed when the people turned their backs on the natural order of things."

"They cast out all the dinosaurs and replaced them with machines," Elwin added. "Ever since then, we've learned our lesson."

With a lecturing air, Noam said, "We live with the dinosaurs, not next to them, and we don't use machines when living things will do."

"Gideon Altaire was from Poseidos," Bridget said absently. "He never fit in."

Seif appeared in the doorway, slightly out of breath. "Hey, everyone, there's something going on at the rookery."

With that one sentence, spoken as it was with a sense of urgency, the mood instantly shifted from festive to tense and concerned. "What is it?" Romana asked, standing. David stood as well, a hundred worries about Freefall filling his mind.

"Nothing bad," Seif said, raising one hand to calm them all down. "But I thought you'd like to know - Strongwing and Galen Theodorakis are doing a night landing."

"A night landing?" everyone repeated incredulously, even as they abandoned the quarters and followed Seif back to the rookery as fast as they dared. On their second day there, they'd been told in no unsubtle terms by Oonu that night landings were too dangerous to attempt, here in Canyon City; the skybaxes couldn't see very well in the dark, and their riders even less well - and unlike a landing in a convential city, there was a very steep drop for those who missed their mark.

David found himself, as always, at the very end of the group. Running when a misstep would send you six thousand feet to your death seemed a bit foolhardy. To his surprise, though, Romana stayed with him, despite the fact that she had no trouble with heights. Maybe things would be okay without his trying.

He'd just reached the base of the rookery when Romana grabbed his arm. "Stop. We won't make it to the top in time. They're already lighting the signal lines."

A row of lights was appearing on the rookery platform, looking amazingly like the runway lights of an airport, although the way they flickered showed they were fire, not electricity. A darker blot against the dark sky was rapidly approaching.

"Galen's in his fifth year. He's trying for instructor," Romana told him. She hadn't let go of his arm yet, which didn't bother him; in fact, he liked it more than he should have. "If they make a successful night landing, they can bypass the other tests."

The dark blot swooped closer, illuminated from beneath by the Sentinels' unwavering light. "Not exactly what I'd call an easy out."

Romana shook her head, letting go of his arm at last and crossing her owns arms over her chest. "I hate this. Everyone thinks they have to do it now, just because Father and Cirrus did. It's stupid and dangerous - which is what Mother told him when she heard about it. Since then, six people have nearly died trying it, and one skybax lost its wing."

"Will you?" he asked, turning to look at her. "When you're up for instructor?"

Her jaw tightened. "I don't have much choice."

Galen and Strongwing ascended sharply, then set down in the middle of the lights as easily as if it were noon. David released a breath he hadn't known he was holding as the spectators burst into cheers, caws, and honks.

"Will you?" Romana asked him suddenly.

He looked at her, then back at the triumphant rider and skybax. It looked difficult, but the challenge intrigued him. "I don't know."

"Mother never did," Romana said, voice uncharacteristically flat, and walked away without another word.


	4. Questions

David woke up well before dawn, jerked awake by a noise outside his room. He contemplated going back to sleep, then decided he wanted to ask Oonu about some things before everyone else arrived, and got up. He'd become fairly good at dressing quickly during his first round of training, and was ready to go in just a few minutes. Breakfast would come later.

The sky was still dark, although it was the pale gray of pre-dawn, and he could already see the horizon lightening. He stepped out onto the broad clifftop, and stopped almost immediately. Just a few feet away, Romana and Chaz were talking in low voices.

David hesitated, wrestling with the moral dilemma of eavesdropping or letting them know he was there. He was just curious enough to stay still and listen, feeling guilty all the while.

"- miss you," Romana said. "I wish you didn't have to go."

"I wish I didn't either," the elder dinosaur said. His voice was rough and held a note of practiced complaint. "Those sky galleys haven't gotten any more comfortable, you know, and the cold air makes my joints hurt. It's an absolutely terrible thing to put someone through."

Romana said something too softly for David to hear. Chaz made a coughing noise, which David belatedly realized was the sound that had woken him, and then said in a much gentler tone, "Patience, Mana. Everything will work out."

"I don't see how it can," Romana said. She sounded sad - so sad, in fact, that David risked discovery and peered around the edge of the building to see what was going on. Romana _looked _sad, too, standing with her hands clasped in front of her and her head down. Even in the dim light, he could see the forlorn cast to her features. "Maybe I should leave with you and work things out in Sauropolis."

Chaz coughed again, bobbing his short-frilled head in visible amusement. "You're starting to sound like me, child. Here, walk with me to the galley, and then get back to your skybax."

They moved off, still talking, and David continued on his way as well, although he was walking automatically, and not with the sense of purpose he'd set out with a few minutes ago.

What the hell was going on? The most self-assured, determined cadet in the entire city, who had told him point-blank thirty seconds after meeting him that she'd dreamed of nothing else her entire life - what had happened in the last few days to send her attitude spinning down? The only thing he could think of was her meeting with Marion. There was bad history there, obviously, but how could it be _that _bad?

He reached the rookery just as the first slanting rays of sunlight began edging over the world, lighting the rock spires with a rosy glow. Oonu was already there, as David had known he would be, and the veteran rider acknowledged his approach with a rather pleased, "Cadet David. You're early."

"Yes, sir," David said. He'd never understood why his father, one of the wealthiest people he'd ever met, would snap to and start "sirring" whenever his old CO visited, but even after the few weeks of training here, he knew that he would be calling Oonu "sir" for the rest of his life. Once ingrained, it was a difficult habit to break. "I, uh, wanted to ask you a few questions, if that's all right."

Oonu gestured. "Go ahead."

He hadn't expected the easy response, and it took him a moment to get the words out. "Um... Romana said something about her mother being a rider. Is that right?"

"Sylvia Denison," Oonu said immediately, nodding with a clear light of affection in his eyes. "My father was her instructor. She was a gifted rider - had an unusually deep rapport with her skybax."

"What happened to her?"

"She left Canyon City soon after William Denison died. I believe she returned to the hatchery and began raising orphans. This was during the plague years."

Plague years? No one had ever mentioned anything about a plague, but then his education had been pretty rushed. David wanted to ask, but Oonu was still talking, and he knew better than to interrupt.

"It was a great loss to the community. Sylvia had... an enthusiasm for life. It was contagious; everyone was her friend from the moment she smiled. Romana has her spirit, but she's more like her great-grandfather, I've been told." Oonu paused and gave David an evaluative glance. "Understand that I'm only telling you this because you have to work with her."

Taken slightly aback, David said, "Yes sir. I- I understand that."

"Good." Oonu looked over David's shoulder. "I suggest, however, that you address any further questions to Romana herself, and that you do it at some other time."

David looked behind him as well, and saw the sun cresting over the horizon. He also saw the line of cadets making their way to dawn report. Romana was at the end of the line and moving slowly, glancing back at the departing shape of the sky galley. Worry for her tugged at him. Whatever was going on, he hoped she snapped out of it soon.

The cadets lined up and Oonu launched his morning lecture with a stern warning against trying night landings. Then he informed them about the new direction of their training.

"You've learned how to fly solo," Oonu said, striding to one end of the line and back again, "and you've learned how to fly as part of a squadron. Flying with a partner, however, is very different. It takes skill, communication, and care on behalf of everyone involved. You will be running an intricate course. Pay attention. Our newest instructors, Strongwing and Galen, will be demonstrating with their wingmates Zenith and Lorna."

Everyone obediently stepped closer to the edge and watched the two skybaxes and their riders fly into view. They swooped and dove and soared around the mesas and spires that made up Canyon City; it was an intricate course, but not too hard to remember. The most difficult thing for David was holding his vertigo in check as he watched.

Strongwing and Zenith finished the course by passing within a mere foot of each other. Then they broke off into two separate flight paths.

"Skill, communication, and care," Oonu reminded them all.

And Romana was barely talking to him and was buried in some kind of personal problem that had her distracted in a big way. David inwardly winced. This was going to be bad, especially if Oonu called for them first. Oonu had demonstrated a disturbing tendency to do that.

But Oonu stopped in front of two other cadets. "Kiyoshi, Elwin. You will attempt the flight first."

The two cadets snapped to attention, then headed for the platform. Kiyoshi climbed onto his skybax first - David wasn't sure of the pterodactyl's name - and spiraled in a holding pattern as he waited for Elwin. Then they began the course.

Thirty minutes and much correction from Oonu later, two exhausted skybaxes deposited their equally exhausted riders on the platform. Kiyoshi and Elwin staggered to the end of the line, taking up positions next to David and Romana.

"Great eruptions, that was hard," Elwin said under his breath, and Kiyoshi nodded emphatically. "I hope he goes easier on the rest of you."

There was a general murmur of "sure he will" and "yeah, right" from the other cadets within earshot.

To David's relief, Aolani and Noam were next. They started out poorly, making beginner's mistakes and nearly colliding with each other several times, much to their skybaxes' audible annoyance. Then their flight evened out, although they still had to repeat the course twice more.

"What's up with them?" David asked Kiyoshi while Oonu was preoccupied with correcting the two riders.

Kiyoshi shrugged. "I don't know."

Romana suddenly leaned over and whispered, "They're cumspiritik."

"No way," Elwin hissed, looking astonished. "Since when?"

"In Waterfall City," Romana said.

Elwin shook his head. David took a chance and asked Romana, "What does that mean, 'cumspiritik'?"

Oonu had stopped shouting instructions, making it fairly dangerous to talk without fear of rebuke, but Romana stretched up and whispered, very softly, into his ear, "It's a dolphin word. It means 'breathing together.' Aolani and Noam are married."

Her breath was warm against the skin of his face, even with the incessant winds whistling across the cliff. That, along with the jolt of electricity that ran the length of his spine, surprised him more than the words.

Noam and Aolani landed to scattered applause. Oonu reviewed the line and then called out, "Romana and David."

David squared his shoulders and stepped out. _Now or never, do or die, sink or swim_... there were a lot of banal sayings for occasions like this, weren't there? None of them helped change the fact that he was probably about to humiliate himself in front of his squadron.

He let Romana go first, then climbed onto the platform. Freefall croaked a greeting, shaking his big beak from side to side before he took off. David felt the familiar gut-wrenching sensation of falling - the skybax had his name for a reason - before the powerful wings carried him upward.

Romana and Stratus were waiting for him. Unlike the other two sets of cadets who had flown already, Romana signaled for David to wait before beginning. "I've seen this a thousand times," she called to him as they spiraled on updrafts. "Stay level and we'll be fine."

"Right," he called back, and then they were away. As always, the flight was both exhilarating and demanding; Freefall did most of the work, but David was as much a part of the process as the muscles lifting the wings. You didn't steer a skybax, but you did give them directions, and you sure as hell held on when they started looping and rolling.

And it was harder to fly with another a person, keeping even with their skybax's wingtip while navigating a path through sheer rock walls. Less than a minute out, David veered too close to Romana and nearly sent them both crashing into a spire, which earned a good deal of shouting from Oonu. After that, though, they flew perfectly - far better than Noam and Aolani. By the end of the first run, Freefall and Stratus were even flapping in synchronicity with each other, and there was no shouted order to go around again.

Oonu met them with a rare smile. "Very well done, cadets."

David grinned, adrenaline flowing and all of his concerns over the partnership fading away. "Thank you, sir."

* * *

The squadron repeated the run in the afternoon, and twice again the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next, until everyone was flying true on their first try. During that time David managed to send out several postal birds to Vidabba, mostly to Marion. He got replies to all of them; Dad was making good progress in his Dinotopian education, Marion said that she missed his company but was very busy with the farm and would answer him further at a later time, and Karl - who he had _not_ written to - sent him a bird that sang the chorus of "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

David resisted the impulse to kill the messenger, but it was a near thing.

He also sent a bird to Zippo in Waterfall City, and received a lengthy, enthusiastic written response by the very next day. Zippo was delighted to hear from him, and was even more delighted to answer his questions, which delved into a most interesting - albeit sorrowful - time in Dinotopian history. The plague Oonu had referred to, as it turned out, was a rather nasty disease that had stricken most of the dinosaur population several years ago; their levels hadn't quite been the same since. It had also claimed the lives of many humans, and, because of forced burnings, dramatically altered the face of the island's cities. Waterfall City - the city that David knew as the capital - was the second capital in the island's history, he was surprised to discover. The government had been moved from Sauropolis during the height of the plague because quarantine was easier in the isolated waterfalls, and it had never quite moved back, although certain parts of the bureaucracy had returned to their original home. It looked like his education had been more neglected than he'd thought.

Meanwhile, Romana had stopped talking to him again. That was bad, because at the end of the week Oonu called them all, pair by pair, to see how they were doing.


	5. Review

David and Romana spent a full two hours waiting to speak with Oonu - or more accurately, waiting for Oonu to speak with them. For David, at least, the time passed in an agonizing, awkward crawl; he wanted to talk to his wingmate, to find out what was going on with her, but she stared at the cliffs and sky with a steadfast gaze and refused to look in his direction. David wasn't the best with nonverbal cues, but Romana was broadcasting "leave me alone" fairly clearly.

It made no sense. Romana had always been friendly toward him; she'd practically held his hand throughout training, for God's sake, and without her help he probably wouldn'tve have made it. This change in attitude was confusing at best and continued to cause him no end of worry.

"Hey," a voice shouted down from above. David looked up and saw Elwin and Kiyoshi leaning over a ledge - something he himself would never, never do - and waving down at them. "Good luck in there!" Elwin called.

"Easy for you to say!" David called back, and laughter drifted down from their perch. The night before, Elwin and Kiyoshi had been temporarily suspended from flying for "unauthorized activities," which meant that they and their skybaxes had staged a fake pteranodon attack on the newest cadets in the middle of the night. As a result, they got to bypass the status check, because, as Oonu and the other instructors had pointed out, they were clearly working very well together.

All in all, David thought it was a dumb way to get out of an uncomfortable situation (just as much overkill as flooding the school the day before report cards went home, which he'd heard Karl had done once) but waiting now, he sort of wished he had gone along with them.

"You're going to be sorry tomorrow," Romana called up, cupping her hands around her mouth to make her voice carry, "when the rest of us are flying and you're sitting on the cliffs!"

Kiyoshi hit Elwin in mock anger. "I _told_ you we forgot something!"

Elwin swatted at him and missed, and then the two figures vanished from the rocks' edge. More laughter, spiked with shouts, trailed down, and David frowned. How come _they_ got along fine?

Bridget and Seif, the two cadets scheduled ahead of them, emerged from the training room with obvious relief. "Good luck," Seif said as he passed David, who nodded. Everyone was wishing them luck; that didn't exactly bode well.

Romana, apparently more eager to jump into the jaws of death than he was, had already started down the path. David forced himself to follow, hoping beyond all hope that she was going to have a perfectly reasonable explanation and this review would be a smooth and painless thing.

He knew he was kidding himself, but he figured there was no harm in trying.

Oonu was waiting for them, standing with his hands behind his back and looking neither angry or glad to see them. "How are you doing?" he asked, almost before they had come to a stop. The question was also neutral.

"We're fine, sir," David said, risking a quick, darting glance at Romana. "Everything's fine."

Oonu shifted his attention to Romana, who said, "Fine, sir."

Their instructor nodded thoughtfully, his expression never changing. "I am, of course, not pleased to have both of you lying to my face."

David's first instinct was protest, but he didn't, mostly because squirming out of things was Karl's style, not his. It wouldn't do much good anyway, he suspected, his heart sinking. Oonu had a third eye, just like all teachers.

"Your performance during the past week has been abysmal," Oonu continued.

Romana lifted her chin, undaunted. "We're the best in the squadron, sir. You said so yourself."

"I'm aware of what I said, cadet," Oonu said, his voice carrying an unmistakable note of warning. "That only highlights the fact that you've been flying well below your ability level. I want to know what the problem is."

David glanced at Romana again. "I don't know, sir."

Oonu's eyes narrowed. "Cadet Romana?"

She squared her shoulders and said nothing.

"Cadet Romana," Oonu repeated, a scowl appearing on his face. "An answer, please."

Romana swallowed. She didn't look intimidated, but David felt sympathy for her anyway. All the times that Oonu had brought that quiet, forceful presence to bear on him during training came rushing back with a vengeance. He wanted to say something to take the pressure off of her, but couldn't come up with anything. With a steady voice, Romana said, "I don't know either, sir."

Oonu stepped closer to her. "I hope you're telling me the truth."

"Yes sir," she said, swallowing again. "I am honored to be partnered with David. He's an excellent rider."

Oonu stepped back, nodding fractionally. "And you, David?"

"Uh - honored, sir," David said quickly, caught off-guard. "I mean, I'm honored that I've been partnered with the daughter of William Denison. She's - she's an excellent rider. Just like her father. Sir."

Their instructor stood motionless for a long moment, scrutinizing them both with a faint frown. David tried not to move either - so, of course, his foot immediately began itching unbearably. The next time he saw Dad, he was going to ask how he'd managed standing at attention in front of his COs all those years.

"You are the best riders in the squadron," Oonu finally said, the frown vanishing into an intent expression. "You may be two of the finest riders in the entire Corps. However, if this problem is not resolved, your careers will be ruined before they start. Settle it. Understood?"

"Yes sir," David said, Romana chiming in a half-second behind him, and Oonu nodded again.

"Dismissed. Breathe deep."

David had never been so happy to hear three words in his entire life. He snapped to and said, "Fly high," with ill-concealed relief.

They left the room, Romana leading by a few paces, and passed the next set of wingmates entering on their way out.

As soon as they were safely away, David reached out and grabbed Romana's arm, forcing her to stop. She looked at him, indignant, but he was past worry and into anger now, and he didn't care. "Okay, tell _me._ What the hell's going on?"

She gave him a dark look until he released her arm, and then she glared at him for another long moment before brushing past him with a curt, "It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does," he said, walking after her. "We just got chewed out in there for something _you're_ dealing with, and I want to know what."

"Me?" she exclaimed, stopping and turning around to face him, one hand pressed to her chest in an entirely insincere display of wide-eyed innocence.. "What could possibly be bothering the daughter of the great William Denison?"

"Come on, Romana," he said, knowing his frustration and anger were showing and still not caring.

"It doesn't matter," she said again, this time serious and with a tinge of sadness. "I don't think you could understand."

"Well - you could give me the benefit of the doubt and let me _try_. "

She hesistated, clearly wavering, and then said, "No. I'm sorry."

"Why not?" he asked, unwilling to let it drop. She shook her head and turned away, walking faster than he dared on the narrow cliff trail. "Romana -!"

"I'm sorry," she called back without slowing down.

He glanced down at the gaping chasm two feet away, then at her disappearing figure, and debated the wisdom of running after her. His vertigo won out by a narrow margin, and once again he found himself staring after her with a feeling of mixed confusion and frustration.

It wasn't getting any easier with practice.


	6. Last chance

Note: And now, after all of this, we are finally getting to the plot. Such as it is. This chapter's short, but the next is pretty long, so that makes up for it, I guess.

* * *

The next day dawned bright and clear. David felt like it should be gray and raining, the better to reflect his mood. This conflict with Romana was quickly sucking all the fun out of being a skybax rider, and, as he'd done the night before, he wondered a few times if it was even worth it. But he reported to the squadron just like always.

Today Oonu had something different for them: an actual mission.

"Tomorrow, a convoy will be departing from Pteros to the Great Desert," he announced. "They will be following the river canyons as far as possible, before turning and heading on a course for the lost city of Ahmet-Padon."

If it was a lost city, David wanted to ask, how did they know where it was? He held his tongue, though, not wanting to get into any more trouble.. Next to him, Romana straightened, an intensely curious look blossoming on her face.

"Apparently the recent discoveries in the World Beneath have sparked a new interest in archeology. The expedition will consist of fifteen humans, four ceratopsians, and an unspecified number of dromaeosaurs, with a sauropod accompanying until they exit the river canyons." Oonu stopped for a moment, looking at all of them to be sure they were still paying attention. "Obviously, a group this large will need significant support. The third-year cadets will be executing flyovers for the length of the journey, as well as regularly scheduled visits to Ahmet-Padon once the expedition reaches it. You, however, will be conducting a far more important observation. As the expedition will be using the river canyons, they need to be sure they will not be at risk."

Everyone nodded, knowing what he meant. Here, in the rainshadow of the Forbidden Mountains, water was both precious and dangerous. A storm on the fringes of the Great Desert could unleash a flash flood that raged much further than its sourse. In the sky and on the upper levels of the canyons the floods were not threats at all, but a ground expedition would be placed in grave risk.

"You'll be assigned to a specific area," Oonu went on, moving to the large map on the board nearby. "Check for evidence of recent flooding and for any alternate routes."

The map was marked with a roughly fan-shaped wedge, radiating out from the city and divided into sectors that corresponded to several dozen square miles in size. Each sector had names written in it; David and Romana had been given one of the sectors furthest from Canyon City, on the edge of the desert proper.

It was a test, David realized, his heart sinking. And if not a test, it was a forced opportunity - if Dinotopians could ever be said to force anyone into anything. Oonu was sending them out into the desert with ulterior motives. Admittedly, it was a considerate gesture: they would have the chance to resolve their problem, whatever the hell it was, in total privacy.

He looked at Romana and saw that she'd come to the same conclusion. Their eyes met for a moment, the shared knowledge flickering in hers, and then she pointedly looked away and raised her chin slightly.

David ground his teeth. God, this was getting so _old_. If she wasn't going to come clean about it, maybe he should just leave her in the desert.

The idea had more appeal than he wanted to admit.

Oonu concluded his briefing with, "You are dismissed. Cadet Romana and Cadet David, stay here."

The other cadets dispersed, most of them giving backwards glances at the unlucky two who'd been singled out. David, seeing the grim expression on Oonu's face, braced himself for the worst. He was becoming depressingly used to "the worst," he thought.

But Oonu was apparently through with the lectures and long, uncomfortable silences. He rubbed his eyes, looking suddenly tired, and said, "I hope you understand how important this is."

"Yes sir," David said. Romana echoed him a fraction of a second later.

"This is your last chance," Oonu warned, in a voice that made the phrase "gravely serious" seem inadequate. "If you do not perform to the best of your abilities on this mission, the Corps will be forced to seriously reevaluate your partnership. Am I clear?"

"Yes sir," they chorused.

Oonu speared them both with a glance and nodded. "Breathe deep, fly high."


	7. Crash

It took the better part of the morning to reach their given sector, and all afternoon to survey it properly. It was mostly flat desert, although there were several channels with fresh signs of flooding - debris and other things that David didn't recognize but that Romana spotted from a thousand feet up. 

She was being civil. Professional. And marginally polite. David was afraid to push it further and kept his own comments to the same level.

There was a lot to distract him, out in the desert, like the roasting heat or the burning sun. Freefall refused to land after their first touchdown, since the sand and rocks were also searingly hot. David called him a wuss; Freefall understood the tone, if not the word, because he squawked and did a barrel roll that almost spilled David from the saddle.

By the time the sun was beginning to ease toward the far horizon, they'd made it back to the outer canyons carved by the Amu River and its tributaries. Here the canyons were only a few hundred feet deep, as opposed to six thousand, but they sprouted mesas just like the main canyon. He was trying to come up with a good way to approach Romana - lock her in a room until she 'fessed up, maybe? - and also worrying about making it back to Canyon City before nightfall. They were a long way off.

Still, it wasn't a bad flight, and being in the air was probably the most calming experience he could name.

One second everything was perfect, and the next Freefall screeched in pain and one wing abruptly stopped flapping, pulling in close to his body. David gripped the saddle in a moment of wild panic as the skybax plummeted toward the ground, and then his training overrode instinct and he jerked sharply on the leather connecting him to Freefall. "UP!"

Freefall screeched again, a truly agonized sound that made David wince in pity, but the skybax managed to slow their descent to something approaching reasonable speed. It was still too fast.

A mesa rushed up at them, and Freefall did his best to slow further as they neared the inevitable impact. David ducked his head down and braced himself as well he could, calculating furiously all the while. Impact was going to hurt Freefall more than it was himself, unless he fell off the edge of the mesa's top, and then he would have to find some way to catch himself before he fell all the way to the river -

Freefall jerked backwards into the proper landing position, but it was too late and too fast for a good landing, and they slammed into the mesa's flat top with a force that jarred every bone in David's body. He lost his grip on the saddle and felt himself hit the rock, hard enough to knock the wind from his chest, and then there was frozen moment of trying to suck air back into his lungs.

When he finally did, he staggered to his feet, wheezing, and looked for Freefall. The skybax was sitting up in a cloud of dust and sand, clearly dazed. David forced himself to walk the short distance between them and check Freefall for damage. The membranous wings could tear so easily, and they took forever to heal - if they healed at all.

Freefall squawked at his approach, shaking sand from his head. David, still breathing hard, ran a hand along the length of his beak to comfort him. "Are you okay?"

Freefall made a series of caws that sounded like an affirmative answer, although the undercurrent of pain that ran through the communication made it obvious that "okay" was relative.

There was a sudden whoosh of wings and wind behind him, and then Romana said, "David! What happened? Are you both all right?"

David was not all right. He'd had the wind knocked out of him before, and it hadn't taken him this long to recover. No, the tight feeling across his lungs and throat that was making it so difficult to breathe now had nothing to do with the impact. "Check his wings for me," he said, sitting down on the nearest available patch of rock.

Romana gave him an odd look but did as he asked. Freefall, normally distrustful of other people, made no protest; he was probably still dazed. "They're fine. No damage." She rubbed Freefall's beak and added, "You're one lucky skybax."

Freefall bobbed his head in agreement.

David closed his eyes, trying to remember what he was supposed to do. Stay calm - but that was easier said than done when your respiratory system was trying to suffocate you. Every new breath was a labor, and less oxygen got in each time. My kingdom for an inhaler, he thought, not joking in the slightest. Why in God's name had he gotten on that plane without an inhaler?

"David?" Romana said, very close to him, and he opened his eyes to see her concerned face hovering in front of his. "David, what's wrong?"

He hated to waste the breath, but he said, "Asthma. Can't breathe."

Her expression changed from concern to alarm, and then she stood and ran to Stratus, who was sitting next to Freefall and looking over the other skybax with concern. She opened one of the bags on the saddle and came running back with a small wooden box marked with red footprint letters. "I hope I still have some..." she muttered, flipping the box open and rifling through its contents. "Hold on... Yes, here it is!"

She withdrew a small vial filled with green liquid and a bulky glass syringe. With swift, practiced motions, she fitted a needle to the syringe and stuck into the vial's rubber-looking stopper, drew liquid from it, and tapped the glass to dispell air bubbles or whatever the reason was people did that. Then she reached up, took his arm in her hand, positioned the needle over the vein in his elbow, and said firmly, "Hold still."

David, not at all sure about the validity of this treatment or Romana's qualifications to administer it, pulled back. She grabbed his arm again, this time with a strength that startled him. "This will help. Be _still_."

And before he could do anything else, she stuck the needle into his vein and depressed the plunger smoothly.

David, more irritated than anything else, waited until she had withdrawn the needle before pulling his arm back again. A small amount of blood welled up at the injection site, but nothing too bad. Romana was better than most of the nurses he'd encountered.

"There. It shouldn't take long," she said, dismantling the syringe and replacing it in the box after wiping the needle clean with a small white cloth.

To his surprise, it didn't. The constriction in his throat began easing almost immediately, and he felt himself relaxing slightly - which, of course, helped the whole process along.

Romana sat back on her heels and watched him, not saying anything aside from the occasional murmured word of comfort, until he was breathing steadily again. Then she handed him her canteen, and he took a long drink of the water.

He handed the canteen back, saying, "Thank you. What was that stuff?" It worked about as fast as the bronchodilator inhalant he was used to.

She smiled and looked a little embarrassed. "I'm not sure, honestly. My brother makes it from a plant that grows on Ko Veng."

He thought back to his round of geography classes; Ko Veng was one of several small islands off the eastern coast. Busy remembering, it took him a second to comprehend the other part - and when it did sink in, he blinked in surprise. "Brother?"

"Yes - Arthur." She paused, appearing to realize something for the first time. "I didn't tell you, did I?"

"No, you didn't." Now that he wasn't dying, he looked more closely at the letters on the top of the box, and saw they spelled out MEDICINE; a smaller string of letters on the inside of the lid said FOR MANA - FLY HIGH, BE SAFE. A AND A.

"Sorry. I also have a sister named Almestra. They're inventors, like Great-grandfather," she said, standing and picking up the box. "What happened to Freefall?"

"I'm not sure," he said, standing as well - cautiously, but with success. There went their conversation, it looked like. But at least he'd gotten something out of her, and that felt like a major victory. Arthur and Almestra, and they called her Mana. As far as nicknames went, it sounded better than "Davey."

"I didn't see any damage to his wings," she said. "Perhaps it's something internal - a pulled muscle?"

"Maybe. You're the expert here," he said. Freefall took a shuffled hop-step toward him, croaking concern, and he reached out to pat his beak. "I'm okay, buddy."

"I'm hardly an expert," Romana said with a backwards glance at him. "I'm still a cadet, just like you are."

"But you grew up here. I'd never seen a dinosaur until a few months ago."

"All the more reason to put your new skills to the test." She gave him an evaluative look. "What do you think happened to Freefall?"

Was being put on the spot better than being ignored? He wasn't sure, but she had just saved his life, so he was inclined to play along. He gave Freefall a final stroke and sat down again. "Maybe a pulled muscle. Maybe it's something bigger - internal, like you said."

"A very good non-answer," she said, hands on hips. "You'd do well as a diplomatic ambassador. It doesn't tell me anything about your opinion of his injury, though."

"When I can get up and dance again, I'll give you my opinion."

That brought a flicker of a smile to her face. "Dance here and you'll likely take a nasty fall."

He shuddered in only partly feigned horror. "Don't remind me. So when does the rescue party get here?" he asked, hoping to keep this new conversation going.

Romana shook her head. "Not for two days, at least."

"Two _days_?" he repeated, incredulous.

"They won't send anyone out today, because we won't be overdue until dusk. Then it will be too late. They'll wait all day tomorrow in case we limp in during the morning or the afternoon." She gave him a smile, a stronger one this time. "The good news is that Stratus can fly home and bring help much sooner."

Stratus, though, screeched in vehement protest at that.

Romana turned around and gave the skybax a glare. "What? Why not?"

Stratus dipped his beak, then waddled closer to Freefall and cawed.

"Oh, for goodness' sake," she said crossly.

David shook his head, not quite believing it and delighted at the same time. Freefall, being an albino, had always been something of an outcast among his fellow pterodactyls. To see Stratus, an older skybax and one of the more preeminent of the flock, now acting protectively towards the younger Freefall, was heartening. He might be accepted into the tightly-knit social hierarchy after all - assuming, of course, that they got out of here. "If he doesn't want to go, that's okay. We'll be rescued... eventually. You said so yourself."

She bit her lip, looking unhappy. "I really have no desire to stay out here for two days. For one thing, we haven't got that much food or water."

He hadn't thought of that, but taking a quick mental estimate of the contents of their saddles, he came to the same realization. "Oh yeah."

"Stratus," she said, facing down the large skybax, "the sooner you return home, the sooner Freefall will get help."

Stratus gave a series of squawking noises that made it perfectly clear that he already knew that, and didn't like Romana implying otherwise.

"You could leave tomorrow, at first light," Romana suggested. "Make sure he's doing well tonight, and then go for help."

"It's our best chance," David added, coming to stand behind her.

Freefall took a bobbing step toward Stratus, who tossed his head from side to side, and then they started cawing and clicking at each other. The skybaxes' conversation went on for a few more minutes, and then Stratus turned back to Romana and tapped her shoulder with his beak.

She broke into a broad smile. "Thank you."


	8. Family stories

Note: The PE memory is true, except it happened to me, and I was literally knocked unconscious. Stupid boy. Also the thing about allergies is true; my brother used to be allergic to cats to the point where he broke out in hives, but now he's fine. Stupid auto-immune system. Anyway, this is the looooooong talking part. I do so love filling in backstory, even when it's of my own invention.

* * *

Now that their plan was decided upon, they went about setting up camp for the night. The saddlebags held water, food, and blankets - only one per person, though, which meant they'd be sleeping on the dirt. Romana pooled their fire kits and started a small blaze. David sat back and watched her, feeling slightly inferior. He hadn't quite mastered the art of making fire without using a match, and the kits held chunks of flint and iron pyrite; Dinotopians, he'd been told, had been making fire just fine for thousands of years without the use of matches, so why go to all that trouble?

The skybaxes settled in with much wing-rustling and squawking, tucking their long beaks close to their chests. Pteradactyls frequently looked like big ducks. Big ducks with bat wings, vulture claws, and a demon's beak, David amended.

Dinner was a short, informal affair designed to conserve their food as much as possible. And, surprisingly, they had an actual conversation. It started when Romana asked if his asthma was still bothering him, or if he was fine.

"I'm not up for a marathon," he said, somewhat ruefully, "but then I never am. So yeah, I'm fine."

"What do you think brought it on?" she asked, frowning.

He shrugged. "Stress. Shock. I don't know. Usually it's just exercise that does it, but getting the wind knocked out of me... I guess that could've triggered it." He rubbed his throat and chuckled at a sudden memory. "You know, the last time that happened - the last time I got the breath really knocked out of me - was eighth-grade Phys Ed." Cyrus Crabb smacking him in the stomach with a cane wasn't the same thing.

" 'Phys Ed'?" she repeated, curious.

"Uh - Physical Education. It was a class in school." She nodded and he went on, "This kid - the biggest kid in the class, of course - in the middle of the game, he decided flag football was too boring, so he started playing tackle football instead."

"I gather the two are somewhat different."

"Yeah," he said, making a face. "In one you hit the dirt by accident, and in the other you get your face ground into it."

"Sounds violent."

He laughed. "It is. It's also the most popular sport in America. That and basketball and baseball."

"Now, baseball I've heard of." She didn't elaborate on that, but instead gave him a sympathetic smile. "I'm sorry you couldn't have been raised here, and not in the Outer World. You're exactly what a good Dinotopian student ought to be."

"Ah... thanks." He wasn't certain if he should be offended or pleased, and the conversation threatened to die an awkward death. Floundering for something else to talk about, he said, "So... um... tell me about your family."

"Tell me about yours," she countered, then added, "You know about mine already - I heard that you were asking Oonu about my mother."

"You did?" he asked, surprised and not doing a very good job of hiding it. "How?"

She shook her head, a small, odd smile playing across her face. "It's all right, I don't mind. But the point is, you've learned all that, and I know so little about your family, aside from the fact that both you and your brother are hopelessly enamored of my cousin."

Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, "You know that?"

The smile widened. "I think the whole island does."

He looked down, unaccountably embarrassed. "Wow. That's... that's humiliating."

Stratus made a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter. Freefall followed it with an identical one of his own.

"Oh, great. Thanks, guys," David said, twisting around to look at them. "You're helping a lot."

Romana laughed, a light, musical sound that echoed off the rocks and into the night. David blinked; he couldn't remember hearing her laugh before.. "There's nothing to be embarassed about. Marion... is a special person. I don't have anything against her."

"Then why..." he started, then cut himself off when she raised an eyebrow. "Right. Me first." He took a breath and wondered where to start. The beginning, probably. "Uh, well, you know that Karl's my brother."

She nodded, a small smile still playing across her face.

"He's my half-brother, really," he went on. "My dad's second wife. My mom was his third, and they got divorced when I was ten. Dad... is not a bad guy or anything. He's just not the kind of person that should get married."

"I understand. Believe it or not, people get divorced on Dinotopia, too."

"Probably not the way Dad did," David said, feeling the familar sensation of anger and guilt rising up. "Karl and I were born seven months apart, and I'm older."

Romana took that in silently, then reached out and covered his hand with her own briefly, showing concern in her eyes. "That must have been difficult to learn."

His mother had flatly denied it; his father never mentioned it. But it was hard to disagree with the facts as laid out by the divorce decree, the marriage certificate, and the birth certificate. "Yeah, it was," he said, choosing to leave it at that. "So anyway, we didn't spend a lot of time together, growing up. But every summer, for Dad's birthday, he would haul us both out on trips. Somewhere new every time. Let's see... I think we hit all the continents except Antarctica."

She leaned forward, clearly absorbed. "You've seen the entire world?"

"Most of it, yeah, I guess."

"It must be fantastically big. I can't even imagine."

"It's pretty big. And it's different, too," he said, warming up to the topic. "No city is exactly the same. I remember when we went to Rome - St. Peter's Basilica, the streets, the people... and then the next year, we went to Calcutta, and there were a lot amazing buildings and people there, too, but it was all different. You know? The basic stuff was the same, but the details were unique."

She nodded. "There are differences between Proserpine and Chandara, and Culebra is a world of its own. Not quite the same scale, I suppose, but I understand."

Romana was quick, he had to give her that. Of course, she had the added advantage of coming from a family with dolphinbacks; Arthur Denison would've shared much about the Outer World.

"Great-grandfather used to say it was a good thing that he'd traveled the world for two years before he shipwrecked here, or he'd have died of shock," she said, apparently reading his mind. She smiled again, a sad, sweet smile. "But I'm interrupting. Go on."

"Well... what else is there to talk about?"

"Your mother?"

His mother... an image immediately came to mind: a small, quick-moving woman with a cigarette in her hand or in her mouth, full of energy, always worrying about the latest fashions, always with the same anxious look in her eyes. "My mom... there's not a lot to say about her." He shrugged. "She raised me. That's pretty much it."

Romana nodded slowly, clearly hearing everything he wasn't saying. "I don't suppose you had any pets?" she said, with a note of forced lightness.

"Just some fish, and a turtle. I was allergic to anything with fur until a few years ago, and feathers, too."

"I had a dimorphodon," she said. "And a skybax whose wing never developed properly. Tilt couldn't fly, so he played with me. We made quite a pair."

"I bet." He looked at her, trying to imagine a little girl scampering around the rocks of Canyon City, playing games with a full-grown skybax, and found it to be less difficult than he'd thought. "So now you know about my family."

"Moreso than I did before, yes." She tapped her fingers against her knee, uncomfortable. "Is there anything in particular you want to know about mine?"

David hesitated for a moment, then went for it. "What happened between you and Marion?"

Romana exhaled, chuckling a little. Her uncomfortableness seemed to increase, but she kept talking. "That's a story, yes. Do you know our family history?"

"Just that Rosemary's your aunt," he said, and decided to limit it to that.

She nodded. "My cousin, actually, but it always sounds so silly to call her that when she's old enough to be my mother. Marion and I have the same great-grandfather, but different grandparents. Arthur Denison married Oriana Nascava. Rosemary is their granddaughter, the only child of my grandaunt - another Oriana. She married Mayor Waldo - well, he wasn't mayor then, but you understand - and they had a daughter, Marion. My father was five years older than Rosemary; my brother and sister are thirty years younger. I'm the baby of the family. I was... unexpected," she added, giving him a slightly nervous smile.

"Growing up, I don't know what happened, but Arthur and Almestra - Almestra especially - came to dislike Rosemary, and her mother. At Grandaunt Oriana's funeral..." Romana swallowed. "Things were said. Things that wounded both sides. And later, after Mother died, they said more things. When you and Marion showed up in Canyon City, I hadn't seen her since we were both toddlers. I don't think she recognized me until I gave my name."

So he wasn't the only one with a hopelessly dysfunctional family. That was reassuring. And it did explain why Marion had been less than kind in her remarks toward Romana.

"Hold on, I have a picture," she said suddenly, and before he could say anything in return, she stood and crossed over to the saddlebags, rifled through one pouch, and withdrew what looked like two objects.

Pictures. He didn't have any pictures of his family. Not that he especially wanted any, and anyway, his mom was the only one who hadn't wound up on this island anyway.

She returned, settling crosslegged onto the thin dirt next to him, and handed him a small, fist-sized picture in a heavy gold frame. "Great-grandfather painted this on their wedding day."

The picture was not the stiff, formal portrait he would've expected from a good Victorian man like Arthur Denison. Instead, it was rendered in a few quick brushstrokes, a sketch with oil paints, and its fleeting nature reminded him a little of Monet and the other Impressionists.

In it, the bride was wearing a white dress, her cloud of red hair scarcely contained by a crown of daisies; the groom was wearing an old-fashioned black suit and held himself with military bearing. It could have been a picture from any American wedding in the twentieth century, except the person standing behind them, apparently conducting the ceremony, was not a person at all but a triceratops with a broken horn.

"They look happy," he said. And they did. The joy fairly radiated off of the canvas, a testament to the skill of the artist. Still, it was probably the most inane thing he could've said.

"They were. Every day." She smiled at the picture, fond and wistful and sad at the same time. "That's one of my clearest memories of them."

"What are the others?"

"Mostly, Mother telling me to pick up my toys."

He chuckled appreciatively, remembering all the times he'd been yelled at for leaving something in the middle of the stairs where _"someone could fall and break their neck!"_

"This is one of Arthur and Almestra," she said, leaning across him to set a small, unframed picture on top of the wedding portrait, and all of a sudden the most important thing in the world was the way the side of her body came into contact with his. The padded cotton uniforms didn't entirely hide her soft curves, or the heat she was giving off that was all the more noticible for the chill desert night.

But just as abruptly, he kicked himself. This was not a good road to go down. Romana was acting like a normal person for the first time in over a week, and if he started channeling Karl it was only going to ruin things. Besides, he wasn't interested in her. He was interested in Marion.

"Almestra painted it, years ago," Romana was saying.

"Oh yeah?" he said, pulling his thoughts back out of the ionosphere. "It's good."

He hadn't even glanced at the picture yet, but apparently she didn't notice. "She burns the ones that aren't. Arthur fusses at her for wasting the canvas."

This picture, done in a slightly more formal style, showed a man and woman in their late twenties standing side-by-side, clearly siblings. Just as clearly, they were the children of the couple in the wedding portrait; Almestra had wild auburn hair that mimicked her mother's, and Arthur had the same square jaw and even features of his father - and great-grandfather, if David remembered the self-portrait in Arthur Denison's World Beneath journal accurately.

Seeing the strong resemblance, he realized that Romana's pale, fair-haired appearance was nowhere in evidence in her family tree. "You don't look anything like them."

She shook her head. "I'm adopted."

He'd heard that explanation offered as a joke so often that for a second he almost laughed. Then he caught the look on her face. "Seriously?"

"People die unexpectedly and leave behind children, even on Dinotopia. I'm just now seventeen. Arthur and Almestra are old enough to be my parents," she added.

"Jeez, when you said you were the youngest in the family, you weren't kidding."

"I never joke," she said, looking down at the ground. "About anything. I thought you'd realized that by now."

Something in her tone told him that she really wasn't joking now, and he needed to be careful how he replied. "I did. But I thought that was, you know, only for stuff like flying."

"Unfortunately, no," she said. "That's Chaz's influence, Arthur says."

He sat up a little straighter. That was right - Kiyoshi'd said that Romana had been raised by Chaz after her parents died. "You were orphaned twice."

She said immediately, "And raised with loveeach time. I'm really very lucky."

He tried to wrap his mind around that viewpoint, so typically Dinotopian, and was only partly successful.

"I'm not the only foundling Mother took in," she went on, scratching out something in the thin sand. "Once she retired from riding, she went home to the hatchery and adopted a little _stenonychosaurus_."

"Oh?"

"He lives in Waterfall City now, and has a painting of her on his wall," she said, still scratching.

The pieces clicked together - embarrassingly slowly - and he said, "You're talking about Zippo?"

She nodded, her eyes still fixed on whatever she was doing with the sand. "It's not a very good painting, but Almestra wasn't around to do better."

"Are you related to _everyone_ on Dinotopia?"

"It's an island, David," she said, with a tone of weary patience. "Everyone is related to everyone."

He pressed on, "But you don't know who your parents were?"

Her hands stilled, and she looked at him with a level gaze. "My parents were Will and Sylvia Denison. I am their daughter."

He didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. Instead, he carefully handed over the paintings of her family. She took them and stood, erasing what she'd scratched out with one foot as she did so, but not before he saw the outline of a skybax and the footprint letters ROMANO.

That had to be a mistake in translation on his part, because why would Romana misspell her own name?


	9. Daybreak

David didn't sleep well. They only had one blanket each, which meant they had to sleep on bare ground or freeze (not that it wasn't bitterly cold anyway), and every time he shifted position, another rock jabbed into him. And when he finally _did _fall into a fitful doze somewhere between midnight and dawn, he dreamed that a skybax was leaning on his chest; the dream came complete with the incomparable breathless sensation of suffocation. That woke him up pretty fast. 

He pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing the back of his neck and blinking in the thin dawn light. Freefall was still tucked in the same resting pose he'd been in when David closed his eyes, but neither Stratus nor Romana were where they had been.

For a moment - just a moment - he had the thought that maybe she'd abandoned him there, alone, with an injured skybax and no intention of coming back. The idea left him with a sick feeling of betrayal that was stronger than he expected.

Panicking twice in under a minute. A new record.

It was all for nothing, though; the rising sun highlighted Stratus' wings in the far distance, and as soon as David looked in that direction, he saw Romana sitting on the mesa's edge, staring after her skybax partner.

He stood, automatically folding the blanket and stowing it in its place in his saddle, and stretched his shoulders and neck. Sleeping on hard, unforgiving ground sucked beyond belief.

The wind gusted, almost carrying away Freefall's sleepy good-morning croak. David rubbed his beak and checked his wing, to see if they'd missed something in the twilight. There was nothing, although Freefall was moving a little stiffly. David gave his beak a final pat and decided to go check on Romana.

She was lost in thought, obviously, because she didn't hear him approaching. He hesitated a moment, caught between the omnipresent fear of the yawning chasm just a few feet away and the desire to sit down and keep their conversation going. Fear won out and he stopped just behind her, not sitting down. He watched her, then asked softly, "What are you thinking?"

She started a little, but covered it quickly, speaking in a clipped, businesslike tone. "I was thinking that if we're not rescued today, we should plan on departing tonight. We can leave most of the water here - Freefall will need more water than we do, or his wings will become dry and fragile - and as long as we keep a torch lit, the rescue party should be able to see us."

He knew about the skybax's wings, of course, and felt a twinge of irritation at the casual way she was lecturing him. "No, I meant... What were you _really_ thinking?"

She didn't say anything for a moment, but looked down at the cliff edge.

"I know it's none of my concern," he said, feeling beyond awkward, "but... Nevermind."

"I was thinking about my mother," she said in that same businesslike tone, almost before the word had left his mouth. "She was a skybax rider; one of the best, compared to Gideon Altaire for the ease with which she flew. She and my father used to fly together whenever they could. People have told me that their flights were beautiful, like a dance in the clouds. Oonu remembers seeing them, even though he was barely a toddler at the time."

Romana paused, staring off into the distance, and when she spoke again her voice had lost its brisk coolness and he could hear a slight waver, as though she was going to cry. "But very few others remember Sylvia Romano, because she was eclipsed by William Denison - not in his eyes, never, but in everyone else's. And I am afraid, David Scott, I'm afraid that I will share more than my mother's name, and my own career will be hidden in the shadows of my wingman."

"But you're better than me," he said, without thinking.

"But you're a dolphinback. Don't you see? Only a handful of dolphinbacks have ever become skybax riders, and only one has become a hero in their own time. How can I compete with _that_? Me, an ordinary Dinotopian girl, who grew up with the cliffs at her feet and a skybax for a playmate?" 

He spread his hands out in helpless frustration. "What do you want me to do - quit the Corps? I can't change what I am!"

"_No_," she said, digging her hands in to the dirt. "I don't know what you should do or what I should do - that's why I didn't want to _tell_ you!"

Freefall squawked anxiously behind them, distressed by the loud voices, and David heard the flap of wings.

She stood up abruptly and walked away, brushing orange sand from her hands as she went and kicking up little puffs of dust.

David exhaled sharply, still frustrated, and shook his head. What the hell were they going to do? _If_ they lived to get back to civilization. He wasn't going to leave the Corps, and it didn't seem fair to make Romana leave either. The only other option was to take the matter to Oonu and the other instructors. But he already knew how that would turn out, because he was a hero, however much he was reluctant to claim the title - and a prodigy, too, if Romana was telling the truth.

But she always told the truth, didn't she? And she never joked about anything, and she was infinitely more infuriating than her cousin.

With a start, he realized this was why she'd been acting so strange - not because of that tense meeting with Marion, but because she didn't want to be forgotten. No wonder she hadn't said anything; it wasn't quite jealousy, but it was close enough to make people talk. The daughter of Willaim Denison - and Sylvia Romano, he amended - suffering from self-doubt and jealousy? Unthinkable. Better to go down as having a personality conflict, which was shameful, but in the end, less so than the alternative. Especially in the light of her estranged cousin's high status. 

That made David wonder what Marion was doing, and what Karl was doing, and if they were doing those things within ten feet of each other. Strangely, the thought caused him less distress than usual. Maybe because he had bigger things to worry about - like getting out of here alive.

He kicked a rock over the edge of the mesa, watching it arc down and ignoring the swirl of vertigo it caused. Then he went to see what he had in his saddlebags for breakfast.


	10. Rescue

"Hey," David said, shading his eyes against the sun, "is that what I think it is?" 

It was the first thing either of them had said since dawn, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears. But Romana stood up and looked too. "It is."

David felt a wash of relief. Stratus had moved faster than he'd hoped; it was just now edging toward noon, and the rescue party was already there. He squinted, trying to make out the details more clearly, and was slightly disappointed to see that there were just two skybaxes approaching. They only rated four Dinotopians?

Romana kicked the charred remnants of the fire over the mesa edge, the better to free up a landing space, and then both cadets went to stand near Freefall. The skybax clucked softly at David, who got the message and shook his head. Freefall still wanted him to apologize, but he had nothing to apologize _for_. Aside from making Romana doubt her place in life.

It's not my fault, he wanted to say again. But saying it a thousand times wouldn't help anything.

A minute later, Strongwing and Zenith touched down with expert grace, and their riders dismounted with the same. Galen, striding over to them, removed his helmet and said, amused, "Cadets! Got a little lost, huh?"

"Emergency landing, sir," Romana said.

Lorna, who had also removed her helmet, stopped in front of Freefall. "He was injured?"

"Apparently, ma'am," David said, before Romana could. It was his skybax; he should be the one they talked to. He was mildly annoyed that she'd tried to usurp control of the conversation in the first place. "Something in his wing. A muscle or something."

Lorna gave both wings a quick but thorough once-over. Freefall was surprisingly docile throughout the whole thing, David thought. Usually, he was more paranoid around other people, and had a tendency to jab his beak at them. With a four-foot beak, that was no small gesture.

"I don't see anything," she said, dusting off her hands. "There's no swelling on the joints or tendons. I suppose it's possible that he could have strained it without any visible damage, or the bruises from the crash are obscuring it..."

"Could he make it back under his own power?" Galen asked, coming to stand with her.

"Maybe, but I don't know if we should risk it," Lorna answered. She was frowning at Freefall in an absent, clinical sort of way, like a veterinarian. David wondered how well an Outer World vet would handle a skybax patient, and decided it would be worth seeing.

Galen nodded. "Sky galley?"

"That looks like our only option," Lorna said. She turned to David. "How does that sound?"

As Freefall's partner, he was automatically expected to know more about the skybax than anyone else. And Freefall, shaking his beak, was not interested in flying anywhere.

"Sounds good," David told her.

Galen nodded and pulled his helmet back on. "We'll go get one."

"You go," Lorna said to him. "I want to examine Freefall more closely."

Her partner flashed her an easy smile and loped off to Strongwing. Moments later, the mesa's top was washed with the downdraft of their liftoff, and David turned to keep one hand on Freefall's side while Lorna examined him.

"I never thought anyone would connect with him," Lorna said, crouching at Freefall's feet and making small talk. "He's an independent one, aren't you?"

Freefall cawed and bobbed his head.

"And an albino," she went on, now talking mostly to herself. "Extraordinary. There hasn't been an albino skybax in the canyons for years."

David crouched down too, relishing the chance at normal conversation. "How many years?"

The question brought Lorna up cold. She stopped gently testing the tendons of Freefall's left foot and sat back, scratching her head. "Honestly? I'm not certain. Romana's the historian - Romana?"

Romana, standing some distance away with her arms crossed over her chest, said stiffly, "Not since the year before Oolu's father gained Master status."

"A good hundred years, then," Lorna said, nodding. She resumed her examination of Freefall, but David caught her giving both of them discreet glances.

He was starting to understand why Karl had wanted to get off the island. And he was starting to wish that he'd tried to go with him.

But he said nothing about that, or about the palpable tension between himself and Romana, and instead kept up a brisk, Freefall-centered conversation with Lorna until Galen and Strongwing came swooping back, this time with Stratus flying alongside. The sky galley creaked in a good twenty minutes later; primarily relying on the wind as they did - they were really nothing more than blimps, Dinotopia-style - the galleys couldn't hope to match a full-grown skybax for speed, even when they were being pushed faster by the human-powered propellers.

It took a concerted effort by all the humans on the mesa to bring the galley to anchor, and David, who had never done this particular activity before, found himself scrambling to get his rope tied properly. Romana wound up neatly plucking the rope from his hands and tying it off herself, all without a word or a flicker of emotion.

Once that was done, the others began lowering and securing the makeshift litter that would move Freefall from the mesa to the galley. It looked not a little like the stretchers used in the Outer World to move dolphins and orcas from one tank to another. For the first time, David wondered how the dolphins felt about that.

He decided to give Freefall a last-minute pep talk. "All right, I'm coming with you, so don't worry. But getting you in there is going to be a bit complicated. Hang tough and be cool, okay?"

Freefall screeched, tossing his head and giving David a look that plainly said, 'Duh.'

The crewmen in the galley began hauling the stretcher upwards. David guided it unntil it was too high for him to reach, and then he took a deep breath and started climbing up the rope ladder that would take him into the galley.

The ladder swayed, a lot, and his hands slipped all over the wooden steps and rough rope until he figured out a better way to grab the stupid things. He did not look down. "Down" was a mesa twenty feet away, with a canyon floor two hundred feet below that. Looking down would be suicide.

He half-fell, half-flung himself over the side of the sky galley just as Freefall was unloaded. The skybax squawked, stoically enduring the indignity of riding through the skies. David was just starting to get his equilibrium back when a sharp whistle echoed up from the mesa.

He looked over the edge of the galley's hull with some caution.

"We're flying back," Lorna called up, sliding her helmet on, and behind her Romana was doing the same. Galen was already casting off the mooring lines, and David felt the galley lurch.

"Right," he called back, not looking down as much as possible. "Thanks."

Lorna flashed him a bright smile, visible even with the distance. "Breathe deep!"

Galen repeated the phrase, waving. Romana said it too, but with a noticible lack of enthusiasm.

"Fly high," he called back, and then got away from the edge before the vertigo made him dizzy enough to fall over it.


	11. Return

After nearly an hour of being stuck in a cramped woven-reed hull with the pilot, the crewmen, and a large, restless skybax, David was more than ready to make the short jump from the galley to the ground in Canyon City. 

He managed to stay on his feet, and waved away the clouds of sand and dust his arrival had caused as Freefall was lowered more carefully.

A small crowd had already gathered in and around the rookery, including the other cadets in their squadron, some of the instructors, and a good number of the skybaxes.

He didn't see Romana anywhere, but Elwin and Kiyoshi were, as usual, right in the thick of it.

"Breathe deep," Kiyoshi said, slapping him on the back and making a face. "And take a bath."

"Nice to see you too," David retorted, but grinned. Having friends - _real_ friends, and not just other people who didn't quite fit in - was a new thing. He liked it, though.

The litter touched the ground, and David quickly unfastened the straps securing Freefall. The skybax immediately stood up and hopped-shuffled onto the cliff proper, taking up a perch on an outcropping of rock.

The sky galley was freed from its moorings and drifted off to wherever it had been going in the first place, the crew waving and shouting good wishes at the crowd, who also started to drift away. The exciting part was over, and they all had work to do.

Kiyoshi ran a hand through his short hair and asked, "So what happened to Freefall?"

"I'm not sure, but now that we're back -" David never got to finish the sentence, because Freefall squawked and abruptly spread his wings, then jumped off of the perch and flew away into the maze of rock spires with no trouble whatsoever.

"Looks like he's going to live," Lorna observed.

David was not appeased. If anything, his frown deepened as he became more concerned. "That's so weird. He _crashed_. I was _there_."

"Maybe he was just faking it," Elwin offered up, shrugging.

"Yeah, but why?" Even as he asked the question, an answer rose to mind. Why would Freefall do that - fake an injury and strand the four of them out on a lonely mesa for an entire night?

Easy: For the same reason that Oonu had sent them to the edge of the desert.

Jesus Christ. His own skybax partner was plotting against him. And not just his - Stratus must have been in on it too.

He should've thought of it sooner, especially since Freefall had been clever enough to figure out that he'd gone into the World Beneath, and had in fact been waiting at the temple when they emerged. But there was that little thing of the skybaxes not talking with human voices, which made them seem less intelligent than they truly were. Obviously they were smart. And good actors to boot. 

David shook his head, amazed. It was a new experience, being manipulated by a pterosaur. It didn't feel any different than being manipulated by a human.

"Who can tell? Before I forget, Oonu wants to see you," Kiyoshi said, breaking him out of his thoughts. "And Romana too."

David looked around at Canyon City in general. "She's not here?"

"Galen said she was taking the long way back." Kiyoshi shrugged, unconcerned.

Elwin had obviously caught the alarmed note in David's voice, though, because he said, "She landed about twenty minutes ago and went straight to quarters. Don't _worry_ so much."

David, who'd heard _that_ one before, just sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Yeah, okay."

"We'll get her," Elwin said, pushing David towards the stairs. "Don't keep the man waiting!"

Oonu, it turned out, was waiting for him in the administrative offices, and when David got there, the instructor was going through a stack of documents with brisk precision. "Glad to see you intact, Cadet," Oonu said after the formal greetings.

"So am I, sir," he said, getting an idea in a flash of inspiration, and he added quickly, "Thanks to Romana."

Oonu lifted an eyebrow but didn't look up from the papers on his desk. "How so?"

"She saved my life, sir." He gave Oonu a brief account of the crash and his asthma attack, concluding with, "I wouldn'tve survived without her quick thinking."

"Indeed." The instructor finally set his pen down and met David's eyes. "Freefall?"

"Apparently back to full health, sir." And never in bad health to begin with. He wondered how he was ever going to explain that.

"Cadet Romana?"

"In her quarters, sir."

Oonu narrowed his eyes, and David got ready for the inevitable springing of a trap. He wasn't disappointed, either, because the next thing Oonu said was, "I trust you and Romana will both be ready to return to the squadron in two days' time. As wingmates."

"I sure hope so." Seeing the not-quite-happy look that response brought, David hastily tacked on, "I mean, I'm still not back to full health. Because of the attack. And the crash. I'm still pretty bruised from the crash. Sir."

"Three days," Oonu said, unimpressed. "Please send Cadet Romana to me as soon as possible."

If there was a God, and He was merciful, Romana would arrive to talk with Oonu without David doing anything. Knowing the problem had given him a chance to fix it, and he was pretty sure he had - but he didn't want to muck things up further before she found out. "Yes sir."

And one dismissal later, David was picking his way along the cliff path that lead back to his quarters. All issues with troublesome partners aside, there were exactly three things he wanted to do: get a real meal, get a bath, and go to sleep. In no particular order.

* * *

He wound up opting for the bath first and the sleep last, and was returning from the mess when he ran into Romana. Or, more accurately, she found him. "Romana," he said, his smile fading in the light of her furious expression. "What's going on?" 

"Did you tell him that?" she demanded, not appearing to have even heard him.

"Tell who?"

"Did you," she asked again, pronouncing each word with the careful enunciation of someone who was a hair's breadth away from being angry enough to kill, "tell Oonu that I saved your life?"

"Yes," he said, frowning back at her and beginning to feel defensive. "Because you did."

Something dark and dangerous crackled in her eyes, and he realized that for all her poise and reserve, Romana was not a woman to cross. He should've known that her anger would be just as intense as everything else.

He made a mental note of the day's lessons: never forget how smart skybaxes are, and don't make Romana mad.

"Don't you dare patronize me," she said. "Don't you _dare_."

"I'm not patronizing you," he shot back. "I would've died and you know it."

"I told you this morning that I was afraid - And before evening-" She broke off, shaking her head. The storm in her eyes suddenly gave way to a sheen of moisture, and she turned her back to him. "I'm going to Sauropolis. I'll be back in three days. To rejoin the squadron or not."

That simple "or not" hit David more forcefully than any hysterical slap might have. To not rejoin meant leaving, and leaving the Corps meant forfeiting all privileges of riding skybaxes. He knew that part as well as anyone.

But he didn't know what to say to change her mind, or to make it better, and to be honest, he no longer wanted to do either of those things.

So he didn't say anything, and he walked away before she could.


	12. Three days

David spent the morning sitting out while the squadron drilled, but he was in good company, because Kiyoshi and Elwin were still suspended. They told him stories, mostly of the humorous variety, and he tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to explain the concept of television. The end result was that they were all laughing hard enough to make his bruised ribs ache and Oonu snap off a sharp scolding in their direction. 

Yelling aside, it was a nice break. He almost managed to forget that Romana was gone and the rest of the squadron was eyeing him with deep suspicion.

Almost. And even if he _had_ managed to forget, it would have all come rushing back when Aolani and Bridget cornered him shortly before dinner.

"David," Aolani called out, flagging him down on the cliff path to the mess. "Wait!"

He stopped walking. "Hey. What's up?"

Bridget made a face, amused. "The sky, the clouds, the skybaxes, the blossoms of the century plant. Strange question."

"Not in the Outer World," he said, wondering at the slip. The Dinotopian greeting came easily to him, most of the time... maybe the earlier conversation regarding TV had stuck with him.

Neither of them looked as though they really cared. "Well, we just wanted to ask you whether Stratus was still here," Aolani said.

That was one of the few bits David actually knew, having checked around before the squadron met. He gave them a smile that felt fake even to him, and said, "No, she took him."

"Is Chaz sick?" Bridget asked, eyes wide in innocence. "I can't think of any other reason she would rush to Sauropolis."

"And she was so upset," Aolani added. David began to get the distinct impression that he was being tag-teamed. "As her partner, we thought you would know. Do you?"

"I - no."

Bridget said, "She's really such a nice person, but she's been so out of sorts lately."

"The accident the other day must have been too much, especially with what happened to-" Aolani broke off suddenly, flushing, and glanced at Bridget for help.

"-To other riders over the years," Bridget said, scrambling. "She's lived here most of her life, after all."

Another piece in the Denison tangled history clicked into place. One or both of them must have died in an accident, or been injured enough to make a strong impression on Romana. Somewhere in a corner of his mind, he noted with amazement that she'd never shown any sign of fear or stress on the mesa. She handled her phobias better than he did, apparently. "Oh, of course."

Aolani abruptly changed tactics. "You didn't try to pull something stupid like a one-night stand, did you?"

It was such an outrageous question, and one that came so completely out of left field, that all he could do was look utterly indignant and say, "No! Not - No. Never. I'd never do that. My brother, yeah, but not me."

Bridget and Aolani regarded him with twin frowns, which he met with more righteous indignance. After a moment, Aolani tilted her head and asked, "So you have no idea what's wrong?"

He hesitated for a moment, wondering how much he should tell them - how much he could tell them without breaking Romana's confidence, because she obviously didn't want it to be general news or she would've told them already. Finally, he said, "I know what she told me, but there's no way for me to fix it." Short of traveling back in time and letting the entire island die or drowning in a plane crash, that is.

Bridget said, "Oh," and that was apparently that, because they shrugged and went on their way, leaving one slightly confused and slightly angry dolphinback in their wake.

He did not understand women, and he understood Dinotopian women even less.

* * *

Barely after dawn on the second day, a messenger came into the city with the news that the expedition to the un-lost lost city of Ahmet-Padon had run into a roving band of dilophosaurs. The small carnosaurs were just as antisocial as their bigger cousins in the Rainy Basin, and even hungrier due to lack of traffic. The four torosaurs and the dromaeosaurs - of which there were two, it turned out, one extremely old and one barely out of the nest - were quickly overwhelmed, to say nothing of the humans. 

The second-year squadron was called up to help the third-year cadets in defending the expedition. All bodies were needed, so David found himself and Freefall soaring along, and although their squadron wound up doing little more than simply flying above the action, it was the most real excitement he'd had since the night the sunstones had died.

But in the middle of it all, banking into a thermal while organized chaos swirled all around them, he'd looked over his shoulder and felt a deep sense of... wrongness. There was only empty air where Romana and Stratus should have been.

She'd burned her bridges, he kept telling himself all that morning as they returned to Canyon City, and he should just accept that and move on; get ready to get a new wingmate, which he would probably be doing whether she rejoined or not.

There was just one little problem. He didn't _want_ a new wingmate.

To tell the truth, he _liked_ Romana, as a person and a friend - had liked her ever since the first day of training, when her matter-of-fact calm had taken some of the fear away from living on the edge of a cliff. If he had to be stuck with someone for the rest of his career in the Corps, she would've have been at the top of his list; they were both serious, diligent people who preferred study to play. And where he fell short - the vertigo thing, for example - she excelled; likewise, he was more flexible in his strategies than she was.

They really were a good choice to partner. He didn't want to throw all that away. At the same time, she had a point: should they stay together, she would likely be in his shadow. And so much damage had been done - largely inadvertently, true, but there it was all the same.

It bothered him. It bothered him a lot. It bothered him so much, in fact, that he did something he never, never, _never_ wanted or intended to do, even in the blackest depths of desperation.

He asked Karl for advice.

The letter was sent alongside a spoken message bound for Marion, and the replies came before sunset that same day. Marion gave him the same polite excuse that she had before. Karl, though, had something to say.

"Davey - I hate to say it, since you're finally groveling and begging for my advice, but I know less about this than you do. Since when have I been _friends_ with a girl? Since when have I _worked_ with one? And no, Samantha doesn't count because she's nine, for Christ's sake, and Marion doesn't count because... you know."

He did know, and having it thrown in his face stung. Not as much as it once had, though, which made him wonder; not like his life was hanging in the balance now, to lessen the pain in comparison.

"All I can tell you is something Brandi told me - or maybe it was Kelly, I don't know. They kind of blur together after a while. It was some stupid thing from a magazine about meeting people halfway on big issues. So compromise, Davey. Let what's-her-name think she's right, at least partially.

"PS - Dad is of the Land. He's going to Volcaneum. He says hey."

Amazing how Karl claimed he didn't know anything and managed to sound like an expert anyway. David folded the letter up again and tucked it away with his other bits of paper and correspondence, thinking about it. Compromise. Yeah, he could do that. He was ready to make whatever sacrifices he needed to. The real question was, would Romana even want to compromise?

* * *

Three days. 

David spent the morning with the squadron again, but this time, he was by himself; Kiyoshi and Elwin had been allowed to return to flying.

He sat and watched them all, not saying anything, not really thinking anything - just watching. And he decided that watching was a lousy way to spend his life. If there was a way to get everything back to normal, he'd take it.

On the way back to his quarters, a skybax swooped overhead, keening. He followed it with his eyes and recognized it with a small start. Stratus. That meant-

"You know what Chaz told me," Romana's voice said suddenly, behind him, and he turned quickly. She was standing not far away, looking as composed as always, although her uniform was a bit smudged from travel.

"What?" David asked, because that seemed to be the only proper response.

"That only a human would throw away her life's dream over worries." She walked over to him, the composure not fading - in fact only appearing to increase with every step. She belonged here, he thought; she was as much a part of the rocks and cliffs as the skybaxes or the pteranodons.

So he asked the six-million-dollar-question with hope in his voice and heart: "And did you agree?"

She gave him a sad smile. "No."

Hope died a splintered death. His breath caught, and he fought to keep the disappointment from his face and come up with something comprehensible to say in return. But what could he say? _"Hey, I was looking forward to working with you for the rest of my life, but yeah, see you around?"_

"Not at first," she went on, and all of sudden his heart started working again. "I thought that he wasn't listening, that he didn't _understand_, but then I thought about it..."

She trailed off, frowning down at the cliff, and he waited, anxious.

"You've heard people talk about the great ambassador Bix?" she asked, lifting her head and staring at the horizon.

He blinked at the shift in subjects. "Uh... yes."

"Chaz is very fond of quoting her. He gave me a scroll of her writings to review yesterday, and there was one in particular that helped me make a decision."

"What was it?"

"_ 'If all else fails, adapt,' _" she said, taking a deep breath. "I think... Chaz was right. I need to stop worrying so much about what might happen. It's not worth losing... this." She gestured at the cliffs and sky.

"You're right," he ventured.

"I'm sorry I put you through all of this," she said, darting a glance at him. "_You_ were right when you said that it was my problem and not yours."

That made him feel a lot better. At the same time, it made him mad at himself. Two sentences erased everything - all the worry and confusion and trouble, all magically gone in the space of a breath? Jesus.

But what he said was, "I hope we can do a little better this time."

"I know we can," she said immediately. The old intensity burned in her words, along with a clear, shining conviction that erased any of his own doubts. "You're a good man, David, and a brave one. I _am_ honored to be your partner, and your... your friend. You fly as well as..."

"Your parents," he finished for her, remembering not to say "your father" just in time, and was rewarded with a wide smile.

"Yes, my parents." She sighed, the smile fading, and rubbed her forehead. "I've been a fool."

He hesitated, then said, "You're right."

Romana gave him a dirty glare, then broke into laughter. "Well, thank you," she said between laughs, smacking his arm with no hint of ill-will.

"You're welcome," David said, grinning back at her with the sun shining down and the blue sky stretching away all around them, and for once it did not matter how far down the canyon went. He had a feeling he'd fallen already.

END

* * *

Thank-yous: 

I would like to extend deep and heartfelt thanks to my bestest friend, Alhazred, who doesn't know Dinotopia from Adam but gave thoughtful feedback nonetheless; to my stepmom, for buying the DVD, which made a much better reference than the static-y VHS I had; and my Children's Lit class, which gave me an excuse to haunt the Junior Fiction section of the library without fear of discovery (you know, someone jumping out and saying, "You! Aren't you too old to be down here?"). I'd also like to thank those of my profs who cancelled class and gave me a few blissful days in which to finish this darn thing.


End file.
